The only real big surprise is that first baseman Joey Votto is listed under the heading for Team Canada. He hasn’t fully committed yet to playing and probably won’t make that decision until the event draws a bit closer. The Reds have some mild concerns about his surgically-repaired left knee and would prefer that he remains in camp all spring, but they don’t have the power to tell him he can’t participate because he did not finish the 2012 season on the disabled list.

MLB.com notes that 45 different major league All-Stars currently appear on the submitted rosters.

The 2013 World Baseball Classic is scheduled to get underway on March 2, beginning with pool play.

In all seriousness though, Taiwan has been a de facto independent nation for over 60 years now. The situation between the People’s Republic and the Republic of China (Taiwan, or Chinese Taipei) is incomparable to the situation around Puerto Rico and USA.

What does make you wonder is why Puerto Rico participates independently while Curacao, Aruba, and St Maarten don’t. They are independent nations within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In football (soccer) they compete independently. Heck even in the Baseball World Cup, the Netherlands Antilles used to be an independent team until they broke up into 3 nations and 3 municipalities within the Netherlands.

Fair enough, but I wasn’t trying to be that specific. We refer to the “Dakotas” and the “Carolinas”, but neither are a country.

My point was, what is commonly known as Holland is no longer a country, but part of a bigger Netherlands.

My grandmother, who is Frisian, would slap me for saying that out loud if she heard me.

cktai - Feb 22, 2013 at 6:22 AM

I’m incredible excited to see the Netherlands in action. With Profar, Simmons, Bogaerts and Schoop we have a very young but talented infield, although I wonder which of these four will be benched.

The outfield is decent, but not great, with Roger Bernadina and the Japan based Andruw Jones and Wladimir Balentien. The catchers are very raw indeed. In 2009 it was Kenley Jansen, but this time around it will probably be 24yo Shawn Zarraga (Brewers A+), or the even younger Spencer Kiebook (Nationals A-).

As for the pitching staff, we have to rely on AAAA players such as Shairon Martis and Jair Jurrjens. The bullpen is decent through with Kenley Jansen and Dutch league legends David Bergman and Rob Cordemans. The latter has 64-13 record with a 1.01 ERA as a starter from the stats that I could gather, but in the previous WBC he was used as a reliever with quite a bit of success.